Ho To Make Professional Looking Gift Bags

“Gifts are more heartwarming when it is personalized. But is doesn’t mean that you’ll have to stop there. Why not extend your creativity with creating your own gift bags as well. There are actually so many tutorials for this DIY project but here’s one that maybe you can start today.”

Hi guys! It’s Mandi, from Making Nice in the Midwest. Sometimes before a party, you can find me scurrying around our house in a tizzy because I forgot to buy wrapping supplies for a gift that I’m supposed to be taking with me! I’m not always that forgetful, but when I am, being able to quickly whip up a pretty little gift bag sure is a relief. If I have a little extra time, I’ll make a few gift bags at once, so that next time I’ll be sure to have one or two at the ready.

Sometimes you just don’t have a nice box to use when wrapping a present, or maybe you just want to give the gift inside of a specially handmade bag, but regardless of your reasons, knowing how to make a professional looking gift bag is a great skill to have. These bags can be fashioned out of any patterned wrapping paper you have around, or you can paint kraft paper as I’ve done here. Check out the instructions below to learn how to make your own.Supplies:

Suitably sized box

Paper

Scissors

Glue (preferably a glue stick)

Hole punch

Ribbon or rope

Optional Supplies:

Painter’s masking tape

Non-corrugated cardboard (You may also use cardstock, but chipboard is too thick.)

Pencil

Paint

Round foam paint dabbers

You may be wondering why this project involves boxes if the point of making a gift bag is to wrap a gift when you don’t have a properly sized box handy. Well, I enjoy giving nice-looking gifts, and I just deplore the thought of people opening my beautifully wrapped gift only to find a junky looking, marked-up shipping box in between the beautiful wrapping paper and their gift. It’s just not pretty. So even if they’re the perfect size, I don’t like to use shipping boxes for gift giving. They do, however, make great forms for making gift bags! Plus, if I only have one suitably sized box (that happens to look nice enough to hold a beautifully wrapped gift) but plan to wrap multiples of the same gift, I can use that one box as a form for making multiple gift bags.

If you are filling your gift bag with heavy contents, you will need to reinforce the handles and stabilize the bottom of the bag. If you are using your gift bag for a lightweight present, you may skip steps one, two, ten, eleven, and twelve.

Step One: Lay the box on its end on top of the non-corrugated cardboard or card stock and trace around it with a pencil.

Step Two: Cut out the rectangle you traced, and then cut out another one that’s a bit smaller and skinnier than the first one. Cut that second, smaller rectangle in half length-wise. The first large rectangle will be used as a stabilizer for the inside bottom of the gift bag. The two skinny lengths you cut from the second rectangle will be used to …